Broken Spark

[Aela Talith]

[member="Sam Rodarch"]

"Sometimes." Viktor admitted. "But it was small."

There was a loud hiss as Viktor removed one of the now formed metal plates, taking it and quenching it for a moment before slowly slipping it back into the flames, though this time at a higher angle so the metal would only heat and not melt. "You couldn't do anything, you couldn't learn anything new because...well everything was old. That's why I left. I wasn't the blacksmith's son, but I always liked watching the Smith when my father went to town."

Viktor explained as he began to work the metal on the anvil.

"So eventually I became the Smith's apprentice." He continued to speak between the beats of his hammer, the bit of shaped metal forming into a sort of odd curve before he set it aside and repeated the entire process with another slightly smaller piece. "But, you can only learn so much fixing old droids and plows."

Viktor repeated the process again and again until there was about twelve or so curved pieces, each one seemingly capable of fitting into the last. "I traveled, and I learned, and I don't regret a second of it."

 

[Sam Rodarch]

Even the downsides seemed nice.

Perhaps not for everybody, certainly Mandalorian culture didn't adhere to staying in small dwellings and playing farmer. Actually, their culture dictated that they would be razing such a civilisation in the name of conquest. Although, maybe not these days. They were a seemingly fractured people, represented by faces that betrayed history.

Evolving? Or broken?

As Viktor hammered away at the metal the young woman's eyes glazed over, her mind wandering elsewhere, trying to picture herself standing in the picturesque idea she had formed of his small farming world. The idea didn't quite settle however, it didn't feel right. How would she fit in? What would she even do? Frustration bubbled in the back of her mind.

Even in a fantasy Sam didn't belong.

Her lips formed a thin line, expression tightening into a harsh scowl, the thrum of a headache surfaced on the horizon and the sheen of sweat was more than visible upon her brow. Irritation crept up her spine and all Rodarch wanted to do was snap at this man for knowing what he wanted to do with his life and succeeding at it.

“Good for you,” the shockboxer said slowly, not sarcastically but the words weren't exactly draped in happy tones either.

---

[member="Viktor Kull"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Sam Rodarch"]

He shifted slightly as his weight came down to add another blow to the growing set of metal links that he was crafting. The pieces were now coming together, forming as a whole. Viktor had brought up a second row of pieces besides the first that he made, though none of them had yet been solidly forged together, that would come in a moment. "By making them like this..."

Viktor trailed off for a moment as he swept up one of the rows.

"They'll seal together." The pieces went slowly into the fire until they too were heated to a red heat, almost white. "So that if someone tries to hit you, stab you, or slash you the gauntlets will be sealed and you can just bat their blow away. It will also mean that there's more weight behind the punch."

That was simple logic. "The best thing though is that they'll still be light because the metal is so thin."

Viktor seemed incredibly proud of himself for that. He wasn't even mentioning that the gauntlets would be capable of bursting electricity not just from the knuckles, but also from the strings of metal that would flow down Sam's wrist. Perhaps some would call it cheating, but it wasn't like the things would break any regulations or anything like that, in fact, from what he saw of the old ones he was pretty sure that there weren't any regulations anyway. He frowned slightly, then pulled the heated metal from the flame.

Slowly, almost methodically he crimped the Beskar together.

 

[Sam Rodarch]

Change of topic, probably for the best.

The man explained what he was doing, or rather why he was doing it. Stated beforehand, Sam knew little to nothing about forging and smithing and if she attempted to talk about it the young woman was probably going to look very foolish and probably offensive. All the various metalworkers in the galaxy would have felt a disturbance in the Force.

Although, Sam was liking the sound of the benefits. Her gloves had been beyond all hope, so busted that if she had clashed gauntlets with another then hers would have likely fallen to pieces.

“Sounds good,” she said, a tone of happiness almost sneaking into her tone. Almost.

Again, she felt guilty. I mean, Brom was a family friend, the only one they had left and she didn’t ever feel bad when he did her a favour. She had tried paying him before, but he would always refuses. Steadfast, unyielding, Mandalorian. There was only one thing he ever asked of her.

‘If you wanna pay me back, squirt, get your old man off the drink.’

Another frown. Can’t be doing with having these kind of thoughts.

“Are you sure that there’s nothing I can do to settle the score? Is there anything that you want or need? Just name it, i'll see what I can do.”

---

[member="Viktor Kull"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Sam Rodarch"]

"Score?" Viktor didn't quite understand what she meant.

This wasn't really something that he had done for her. It was something that he had done for himself.

Sure the work was involved, and ultimately the gloves would go to her...but that didn't matter to him. Crafting was his lifes work, it was what he wanted to do for as long as he lived. He wanted to be a master Smith, better than the greatest and hailed as a legend within the art. Creating the gauntlets had been simple, or rather, it had been challenging enough that Viktor had been able to do it with some passion behind it. He frowned for a moment and looked her up and down, then cast a glance towards the gloves.

"Don't tell Brom." He said flatly, and quite uncharacteristically as well. "If he finds out I used the scrap without his permission he'll stop training me."

That realization hadn't really struck him until that moment, but it was a startlingly harsh one.

The only reason that Viktor was here on Concordia, the only reason he'd come to this sector had been to learn to craft Beskar. While he'd just done that, and had done it before, he still didn't know the first thing about actually creating the metal itself. That was a skill that still eluded him, and one that he desperately wanted to learn. If Sam told Brom about this little...experiment, he knew that everything he was here for would quickly disappear.

Not something he wanted. "Do that and we're fine."

 

[Sam Rodarch]

This man held an air of innocence around him. It made this world seem too cruel for his kind, the very fact that he had to question what a score was made this more than evident. Places like this ruined men like him, but Sam wouldn’t willingly take part in that.

Technically the young woman should have grassed him up to Brom, after all, the smith was a lifelong family friend and this guy was...well, she met him today.

Still, Viktor had hardly committed some grave crime, he hadn’t stolen anything of massive worth that would have really impacted Brom’s work. In fact, Sam imagined that this guy was planning on quietly replacing the scrap that he had used. It wasn’t a big deal, well, maybe to him but not to anybody else. Would Brom have even cared that much? Maybe. It was a different world.

“I can do that,” Sam nodded, before looking over her shoulder at the door to the shop, “actually, I’m kinda surprised he hasn’t returned yet. He never usually leaves the shop for long."

She paused, about to unintentionally make Viktor feel slightly guilty.

"Guess the big guy must trust you back here."

---

[member="Viktor Kull"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Sam Rodarch"]

He hooked one of the links of the gauntlets together, poking his head up and looking about as Sam mentioned that Brom usually wasn't gone for this long. He frowned for a second and realized that she was right, Brom was almost never gone for this long. That was weird. His head shook from side to side. "She's probably making trouble again."

Viktor didn't have to say who she was.

"He always has to clean up her messes." He shook his head again. "He'll be back eventually."

That was for sure.

Brom didn't quite trust Viktor enough to let him lock the store up. He'd tried to offer the old man to close up once or twice, and both times the man had rebuked him with a hard smack to the back of the head. Brom was a hard man, and he wasn't about to let some young'in upstart try to take over his shop out of the blue.

That much had been made clear.

 

[Sam Rodarch]

A scowl, trademarked.

“You’re probably right,” Sam replied, voice low and full of disdain. What had she done now? Nobody could really believe that that...woman was from the same blood as Brom. They had so little in common that there had always been rumours of affairs, but they had always just been that, rumours.

Gossip didn’t phase Brom, he was a good man and to him she was always his blood, through thick and thin.

“Feth! What has she done now?” Sam spat, suddenly feeling the need to massage her knuckles, with frustrated bravado the young woman begin swiping at the air with her fists “I’d love to just...fethin’ give her one!”

Sam knew her as Miss Fortune, but her actual name was Amanda. Not that Rodarch would ever give her the pleasure of pretending that she knew it. Suffice to say, they did not see eye-to-eye.

“Have you had the pleasure of meeting her yet?”

---

[member="Viktor Kull"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Sam Rodarch"]

"Yeah." He said quietly, looking down at the half finished gauntlet.

Amanda wasn't a very nice person to say the least. She was almost the complete opposite of Brom. Entitled, spoiled, and unwilling to work hard for even a minute in her life. In truth he wondered just how such a girl had come up from a different man, but he supposed that her mother probably had something to do with it. Viktor tried not to judge, but when you were dealing with someone like Amanda...well it was hard not to. He shifted for a moment, remembering their first meeting.

His hands reached out and gripped the metal, linking a piece of wire through the top of the beskar gauntlets.

Their first meeting hadn't been very good, with Amanda calling him all sorts of mean names and eventually insinuating that he was broken in some way. Viktor had held his tongue then, if only out of respect for her father. Still, the memory still stung. "She's not very nice."

That was all he said before he returned his attention to the gauntlet.

 

[Sam Rodarch]

Even Mister Sunshine Farms had to say that she wasn’t very nice, I mean it was hardly a scalding insult, somewhere out there the witch didn’t feel a pain in her heart as he spoke but still, if she made a negative impact on this guy.

Well, the proof was in the pudding.

“That’s a mild way of putting it,” Sam muttered, finally stopping her feverish air-boxing (but not because she looked a bit silly), “she’s a total schutta.”

Even just thinking about her sent a raw rage coursing through Rodarch’s veins. Of course, that was assisted by certain stimulants. It just left her there, clenching and unclenching her fists over and over again. Of course, instead of trying to calm down, she riled herself up further, just thinking about that witch.

“Do you know she’s been trying to buy the shop from him?”

Sam began to pace back and forth, as if she was Brom’s daughter and Amanda was some villainess from the holofilms. Not true, but sometimes it really did feel that way.

“She’s his daughter, and she’s trying to buy his….his livelihood! It’s karked up. It’s really karking karked up!”

---

[member="Viktor Kull"]

 

[Aela Talith]

[member="Sam Rodarch"]

Viktor looked somewhat uncomfortable about the conversation. Back on his homeworld there was no such thing as 'buying' someones shop. Everything was simply inherited, passed down through the family and willingly given when it was time to move on. Things had worked like that for as long as Viktor had ever known, since his grandfather...probably before then. No one bothered with trying to take things away from anyone, least of all their parents.

"I didn't know that." He said quietly as he finished the last loop of wire within the gauntlet.

"I don't..." Viktor trailed off for a moment as he began to fiddle with the metal. "I don't understand how she could even do that. Doesn't he own this place? Amanda doesn't know how to smith or do anything like that, the shop would close in a matter of days."

There wasn't any other way to make money here.

For a moment the young Smith Apprentice simply frowned. He knew that Amanda was bad, mostly because...well she was a very mean spirited girl, but he'd never known that she wanted to take away her fathers pride and joy. If there was one thing he could tell about Brom, one thing that he knew for sure, it was that Brom took pride in his shop and the work that left it.

He wouldn't even let a sub-par Dewback shoe go.